Happy Birthday Grandpa

We had a birthday party for Grandpa at our house this evening. Everyone was here, except my sister Alisa. It made me miss her terribly, but she's coming to visit soon! Yea!

There is nothing in the world like raising my kids close to family. I'm so glad Richard likes it here.

Grandma rocking Jessica

Grandpa read this little book to Kate for quite a while. It's a first words book. They looked through each page and picked out which items they liked. Of course I had to run and grab the camera. I want to always remember moments like this.

I love watching these cousins together.

Jessica teaches him everything she knows.

Cinderella

Amber & Kate performed in the Cinderella Ballet this week. I took some great pictures at the dress rehersal. I thought Rich had transfered them to my computer, so I deleted them off the camera. Only to find out later, he hadn't trasfered them. Oh, I'm sad! Now I'm really glad I bought the professional photos they had taken. They turened out great!

I love watching Amber on stage. She is a great performer. She exhibits confidence and happiness on stage. Kate did really well and got to lead the bows for her group. She was so cute. She thought leading the bows meant calling out the steps out loud "tendu, curtsey, tendu to first, tendu, curtsey, tendu to first." Because she's so little, it was really cute.

Here's the only half-descent photo I ended up with.

Today was Amber's last day of 1st grade. To celebrate, we had a swim party. They enjoyed their water blaster tubes & making homemade ice-cream in a bag. I'll post the directions below.

Shake & Make Ice Cream
1 Cup half & half
2 Tablespoons sugar
½ tsp vanilla or chocolate syrup

Mix. Place in pint size bag & seal. Fill gallon size baggie ½ full of crushed ice. Add 6 tablespoons rock salt. Place sealed quart sized bag with ice cream mixture in gallon baggie and seal. Shake the bag for 5 to 15 minutes.

Smarter than we give them credit for

Rich & I have been trying to be more consistent and structured with our kids lately. Tonight after a rant about not being allowed to have a snack right after dinner (which she didn't like or eat much of), we heard Amber mumbling under her breath, "I used to get anything I wanted when I cried."

A short time later, after a sisterly battle, Rich was explaining that it takes two people to have a fight. Amber replied, "Except with your imaginations." Amber still enjoys pretend play and calls the figures of her imagination her "imaginations." With smiles on both of our faces Rich & I agreed that she's right.

Do YOU ever fight with yourself?

Happy Birthday Jessica

In the past year Jessica has gone from this

to this

I can hardly believe it. Even Amber admits the year has flown. Our family is so much better because we have Jessica. With her permanent smile & energetic personality, Jessica is a joy to be around. This past year with her has just been fun. I just can't get a handle on how quickly it has flown.

We had a fun filled birthday party with family. She tried to put her new shoes on her own feet, figured out quickly that the new toys were hers, eagerly awaiting the next gift, and promptly tossed the new clothes aside and started looking for the next gift. She even ate her birthday cake with a spoon!

Amber spent hours preparing a treasure hunt. Kate spent hours begging to put the candles in the cake. My other girls have had beautiful little cakes for their first birthdays. Today I heard a chorus of "I don't like frosting on mine," from every member of the family that knows how to talk. I decided to improvise and made a pudding-like frosting. Although it tasted great, it was a flop. As I frosted Jessica's special little cake, the lumpy improvised frosting glopped down the sides. My mommy-mind could envision a sweet Jessica, several years from now looking through her scrapbook wondering why she received a gloppy mess for her first birthday cake, while her sisters received beautiful little masterpieces. So, I unfrosted her little cake, and grabbed my two cans of pre-made frosting out of the food storage stash, and saved the day. I even pulled out the cake decorating tips from the deepest corner of the cupboard to add the beautifying touch.

Stone Soup

Amber's first grade class put on a play of Stone Soup today. They did an amazing job. Amber is a performer. Already, I can see the benefits of her piano lessons and ballet class. It's fun to see kids in their school environment with their peers. Because Amber is my first, and because her personality is so different than mine, I'm often too hard on her. It was fun for me today to recognize what a great person she is and how lucky I am to be her mom. I was reminded that childhood is so short. (I'm including a quote at the end of the post that I thought of during the play). Amber is so full of fun. I was surprized how that little girl could project her tiny voice.

Amber has a great mean face. She told me tonight, it's because she practices it when she's mad at Kate. I can attest, this is true. These video clips give evidence why I wish and hope for a new camera. For now, this is the best I've got.

Here's the quote.

"I am impressed by countless mothers who have learned how important it is to focus on the things that can only be done in a particular season of life. If a child lives with parents for 18 or 19 years, that span is only one-fourth of a parent’s life. And the most formative time of all, the early years in a child’s life, represents less than one-tenth of a parent’s normal life. It is crucial to focus on our children for the short time we have them with us and to seek, with the help of the Lord, to teach them all we can before they leave our homes. "

"Daughters of God" by Elder Russel M. Ballard, April 2008 General Conference.

Okay, I have to add this too, from the same talk, because I like it.

"Even as you try to cut out the extra commitments, sisters, find some time for yourself to cultivate your gifts and interests. Pick one or two things that you would like to learn or do that will enrich your life, and make time for them. Water cannot be drawn from an empty well, and if you are not setting aside a little time for what replenishes you, you will have less and less to give to others, even to your children."

Actually, the whole talk is really good, so I'll include a link. Click on the title of the talk if you'd like to read it.

Matt & Crystal's wedding

Rich's youngest brother got married in Manti on May 9th. The wedding was perfect. We already love Crystal. As always, it was great to see Rich's family. I really like all of them.

Rich's sister Kaelynn got into town really late, so we got the keys to their room for them. The manager suggested we short sheet their beds. So we did. We must set examples for our children.

Mothers Day

Eight years ago when I was expecting Amber, I had a secret twinge of excitement about being included in Mother's Day. I was quickly deflated when Rich announced he wasn't going to get me anything, not even a card, because I wasn't a mother yet.

I returned home from church that Mothers Day to find a beautiful glider rocker (the very one I'd been hoping for) sitting in our front room. He'd disappointed me, to magnify the surprize effect. That's not a good strategy with me. I feigned gratitude, but, I was wounded. For years I hated mothers day and I had terrible feelings when I looked at that chair. Who was I to think I deserved any special recognition? My feelings were also driven by the guilt I held for holding a grudge so effectively.

Rich hasn't joked about not getting me a gift for mothers day, or any other special occasion, since. In fact, he is so kind, appreciative, courteous, and accommodating on Mother's day now, that I feel like royalty. And, he's teaching our kids. They each gave me multiple homemade cards and mentioned repeatedly that they were going to make it a great day for me by not whining, fighting, etc. Rich even made me a little coupon book for back rubs, un-interrupted naps, & un-interrupted free time. (I thought he'd found it and printed it, but no, he made it himself). There are 8 1-hour coupons for un-interrupted free time. He even says I can redeem them all at once if I'd like. Now that's valuable.

search & rescue

My dad took my brother-in-law Nick out for one last snowmobile trip yesterday. (I think it's his 4th last trip of the season). At about 5:00 pm my mom called me, "Kerri, I have 5,6,7,8 email messages from your dad saying, 'This is a help message. Send Rich, Heath, or Dick out to find me.'." My dad has a GPS thing-a-ma-jig called a Spot. He can use it to send three messages, I'm okay, send help, or call 911 direct. It also sends his GPS coordinates. Since they were snowmobiling right by cell towers we would have called them for more information, if either one of them had taked a cell phone with them. HELLO!?!

We all frantically made dozens of phone calls. It took us an hour to coordinate, gather a search party, snow gear, a GPS, extra snowmobiles and bolt cutters to get my dad's extra ones out of his snowmobile trailer, and look up thier location on google earth. We weren't sure if they'd made a 911 call from the GPS, so my sister called police dispatch to find out. Because I knew we were burning daylight and were an hour and half away I called seach & rescue to explain the situation to see if they thought a seach and rescue team should be dispatched. My brother-in-law called search & rescue too. That's 3 calls to dispatch.

Richard calmly did what needed to be done, because he's like that; calm. They finally got out the door by about 6:00. About 20 minutes later Rich called me and said, "We just passed your dad on the highway."

The punch line: They hadn't had any trouble at all. My dad likes to send himself messages from his spot, so he can track where he's been and then look it up on google earth. When he sends "okay" messages only some of them are delivered, but the "help" messages are received much more reliably. Apparently, he's been sending himself "help" messages the last several trips out, but because my mom doesn't check her email a dozen times a day, she hadn't ever noticed. For some reason, the Spot kept resending the help message numerous extra times on it's own yesterday. I'm not sure if Search and Rescue was deployed. We did notify them immediately once our "lost snowmobilers" were located. If my Dad & Nick wonder if they really matter, they can rest assured. They are very loved. People would go to any length to rescue them. Unless they keep calling wolf.